


Eyes on the Target (The Solid Ground Remix)

by Redrikki



Category: White Collar
Genre: Car Accidents, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7533433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter asked her to keep an eye on Neal for him while he's stuck in jail. It could be going better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes on the Target (The Solid Ground Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frith_in_thorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Keep Your Feet On Solid Ground](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088460) by [frith_in_thorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns). 



Neal hit the windshield with the crunch of breaking glass. He slid off the hood and tumbled to the pavement with a sickening thud as the driver slammed on his breaks. Jones quickly moved in to pull their suspect out from behind the wheel, but Diana only had eyes for their downed C.I. “Caffrey,” Diana yelled as she rushed to his side. “Neal.” He wasn’t moving. “Neal!” He couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t.

He wasn’t. Neal gaped up at her like a landed fish as Diana knelt beside him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Neal nodded. Then he promptly proved himself a liar when he attempted to sit up. The color drained from his face with a gasp. He winced and curled a protective arm around his ribs. “Ugh, maybe not,” he groaned. He ran his free hand through his hair only to pause with a look of alarm.

“Did you hit your head?” 

“Lost my hat.”

The hat in question had rolled behind the right front tire. The usually snazzy trilby had been flattened slightly and had a bit of shmuts along the brim. Diana picked it up, dusted it off, and jammed it down onto his head. “There,” she said, “all better.” She hauled Neal to his feet. She knew she aught to be more gentle with him, but it was surprisingly hard with all the worried anger and adrenaline flooding her system. “You want to tell me what the hell you were thinking?”

Neal shook off her helping hand and slumped back down to sit on the hood of the suspect’s ruined car. “I was thinking about catching the bad guy. Worked, didn’t it?” 

Diana looked over to where Jones was shoving their cuffed suspect into the back of an unmarked vehicle. “Good job,” she said sarcastically. The perp had been fleeing, but there had been plenty of ways of stopping him that didn’t involve reckless endangerment. “Now he’s going to jail and you’re going to the hospital.

*****

_“Keep an eye on Neal for me, okay?” Peter had asked the first (last and only) time Diana visited him in prison. Peter Burke was a good man and one of the best damn agents she’d ever had the pleasure of knowing. Seeing him in an orange jumpsuit like some kind of criminal had hurt worse than she’d thought it would. He shouldn’t be here. They both knew that if it hadn’t been for Neal, with his endless drama and tragic backstory, Peter wouldn’t be here at all._

_“You think he’s up to something?”_

_Peter had given her a wry look. “Isn’t he always?”_

_And that was the problem. Back in the beginning, uncovering and outsmarting Neal’s latest scheme had been like a game. Neal Caffery was too clever for his own good and his own worst enemy, but lately too many people had been caught up in the blast radius when his plans inevitably blew up in his face. Now Hughes was ‘retired’ and Peter was in jail. Depending on how guilty he felt about it, Neal might be tempted to do something stupid to fix things. On the other hand, he might just use the opportunity to try to slip his anklet and run._

_“Don’t worry, boss,” Diana had assured him. “I’ll keep him out of trouble.”_

*****

Diana slumped back in the uncomfortable waiting room chair and sighed. So much for keeping an eye on Neal. Oh, so far she’d managed to keep him from chasing off after his father or something equally harebrained, but not from throwing himself in front of a car. Diana was going to have a baby soon and she couldn’t even keep a grown man from running into traffic. Some mother she was going to be.

Neal shuffled into the waiting room like every step hurt. He was still guarding his side, but wasn’t sporting any slings or casts. This could have been so much worse. 

“What’s the damage?” Diana asked as she gathered up Neal’s hat and suit jacket from where he’d left them when the doctor had called him in. 

“Nothing serious,” Neal shrugged and, judging from his wince, instantly regretted it. “Couple of cracked ribs and a whole lot of bruises.” He rattled a small bag of pills. “They didn’t even give me the good stuff.”

Diana frowned at his annoyingly blasé attitude. “You do realize you could have been killed,” she snapped.

Neal sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Can we hold off on the lecture for now,” he pleaded. “I just want to go home.”

“Alright,” Diana relented and somehow managed to hold her tongue on the drive to June’s. She even managed to rein in her rising temper during Neal’s slow slog up the stairs to his apartment. It wasn’t just that she was mad it him for being a reckless idiot, she was furious with herself. She’d been so focused on making sure he wasn’t plotting something stupid that she forgot to watch out for spontaneous stupidity. 

It was pretty obvious at this point that any appeals to common sense or self preservation would be ignored, so Diana went straight for the big guns. “You know I’m going to tell Peter about this.” She felt like a kid tattling to dad on her bratty little brother, but Diana had never had a problem with fighting dirty. 

“No, don’t. Please,” Neal begged just like she’d known he would. He hated the idea of disappointing Peter almost as much as she did.

“I promised Peter I’d keep an eye on you while he’s…away.” Unlike Neal, Diana had never let their mentor down before and she certainly didn’t mean to start now. “I can’t stop you from being blatantly self-destructive, but I’m damn well not going to cover for you with Peter.”

“I’m not being self-destructive,” Neal lied unconvincingly and Diana snorted in derision. 

Neal’s self-destructive streak was a mile wide and always had been. He’d sent Peter birthday cards while on the run from him for Christ’s sake. No one with a healthy sense of self preservation did something that dumb. Back when they’d been hunting him, it had come in handy. Now that she was responsible for his wellbeing, it was more than a little worrying.

“Look, I know this is hard for you,” Diana said. “I know you’re blaming yourself, and I know your doing everything to try to make it right. But you aren’t helping Peter if you’re not bothering to stay safe. He doesn’t need to be worrying about you on top of everything else.”

“Threatening to tell on me, though?” Neal shook his head. “That’s low.”

Diana shrugged. Somewhere between that night in the hotel and that awkward dinner party with their exes, they’d actually become friends. Diana trusted him about as far as she could throw him, but she cared about him anyway. She didn’t want to lose him too, not after Christy and Hughes and Peter. “Here’s lower: _I_ don’t want to be worrying about you right now.” She hadn’t come up here planning to use her pregnancy for emotional blackmail but, if it kept Neal from getting himself killed, it was worth it. “I’m pregnant.”

He couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d told him it was his. It took several minutes and a glass of wine to get the conversation back on track. “You threw yourself in front of a moving car,” she reminded him after he had the gall to question if _she_ should still be in the field. 

Neal rolled his eyes. “And we’re back to that.”

“We are most definitely back to that. And it’s where we’re going to remain until I’m satisfied you won’t do anything that monumentally stupid again until I can turn responsibility for you back over to Peter.” Hopefully that would happen long before she had someone new to worry about.

“Only until then?” Neal quipped and Diana rolled her eyes.

“I don’t have great expectations for how long you can refrain from monumentally stupid acts,” she said dryly. 

“You really are beginning to sound like Peter,” Neal grumbled like that was a bad thing. They both knew Neal loved him. Diana took it for the compliment it was. 

“You should probably take your prescription stuff and lie down,” Diana told him. It was, after all, that’s what Peter would have said. “You’re going to be a mass of bruises in the morning.” 

She waited while Neal changed into his pajamas and helped him shuffle to his bed. He looked boyish, exhausted, and vulnerable without his signature suit. Diana handed him a glass of water and watched as he took his meds. He leaned back against the pillows with a sigh. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything. Waiting in the ER, and bringing me back here.” He blinked sleepily up at her in way that charmed her more than all his heavy-handed flirting ever had. 

“It’s a one-time thing,” she told him. Diana resisted the urge to stroke his hair back and give his cheek a goodnight kiss. It would be good practice for tucking in her own little boy, but there was no sense in encouraging him. “The next time you get hit by a car, you’re on your own.”


End file.
